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Thursday, October 08, 2009

We talked recently about kids carrying thirty pounds of books in their back packs. To save the backs of our kids, e-books may be the solution. I was reading an article in Tuesday’s NewsOK that says ebooks may be the solution to California’s money woes, as well.

Here’s a bit from the article:

In plugging a $20 million-plus budget hole, California lawmakers decided the state won’t go through the textbook-adoption process for four years. The state’s school superintendent said that means students won’t get new books until 2016 and that meantime, some students will have books older than they are.

On the other side, if California doesn’t buy books, it will drastically hurt the publishers of textbooks.

California is the nation’s largest textbook market, and some are worried the spending cutbacks will affect publishers’ ability to develop new textbooks — in print and digitally. That could be problematic for other states and even individual districts in California with plans to keep buying as many new textbooks as possible.

25 comments:

I’d have no problem with kids using ebooks. I think many of them would be more inclined to read using new technology rather than the standard text. It would also be cheaper to update the material and drastically reduce the weight of their backpacks. But I do think it would need to be the responsibility of the school system to issue a reader to every student.

You'd think Kindle or some other ereader would make a sweet deal to supply the readers at a nominal cost. They'd get publicity, a spike in the numbers of people using their ereader and probably future sales of books outside of ebooks.

I think it's a great idea, until I start thinking about the lost ereader. The left on the bus ereader. The ereader with the squashed apple and banana at the bottom of the bag... the "Mom, you need to replace my ereader cause Darrne's got the latest one and it plays games and makes phone calls. I HAVE to have it....

This is a perfect application for ebooks. I had to chuckle at the "kids having books older than they are" - lol - and in today's age when the morning printed newspaper is already "old news" that's not a good thing!

Helen - it'll hurt academic publishers but is that a bad thing? 95% of the text books that the geniuses of our time learnt from would still be perfectly acceptable for teaching today.

Where's the money better spent? Buying text books or improving the quality of the teaching environment (for pupils and teachers...)?

One of the original ideas behind the OLPC (one laptop per child) project was to provide a durable, cheap, repairable computer that could be used for ebooks and that would be issued to children in the developing world for them to keep. It would be a far better solution than dedicated ebook readers like the Kindle, which are expensive and honestly not that robust.

And the sooner these "open source" text books come to degree level education the better. The abuses of academic publishing there are legendary.

I'm surprised that Kindle, Sony or any publisher hasn't been far more aggressive with the ebooks, particularly in the college textbook market. The market is huge, and the young college kids love, love their technology, a perfect fit for textbooks. It surprises me sometimes how slow publishing can be to jump on board.

As a former teacher, I LIKE the idea, but question if it could be a reality. The price is the biggest factor...schools are strapped for cash right now anyway, and the difference between a $40 book replacement fee and a $200 one is huge, especially for underfunded districts. I also shudder to think of the nightmare of dropped, damaged, or lost readers.

That said, perhaps it's time for citizens to pony up and do more for our public education systems--including teaching children the responsibility necessary to care for this technology.

I think piracy, the issue you discussed earlier this week, would be a big impediment to textbook publishers moving to ebooks. A lot of money goes into developing textbooks because they have to meet both the standards of the academic community and the standards of the elected school boards. What publisher would spend so much to develop a book that could be pirated easily?

text book writer here—I'd still worry about technology offering another barrier to learning, especially for elementary kids. Text book publishers are not innovators; their goal is to meet the current demands of adoption committees. The move to e-readers would have to come from the people who buy texts. Rather than e-readers, I'd like to see simple laptops linked (only) to a dedicated server. This would offer the chance to include videos that show show each leg of an explorer's journey, the effects of varying a single variable in an experiment, or the sublimation of continental plates. If we're going to switch delivery systems, let's at least do it for more than weight loss, let's take advantage of everything the technology has to offer.

Another textbook writer here- I see the good side but I also see that publishing is a business. If a big buyer like the state of California drops out- publishers will stop developing new materials in whatever format. Also, piracy is scary. If everyone is jumping to ebooks then let the technology be controlled somehow or again if there is no money there will be no new textbooks (ebook form) and as a former teacher I know that is a bad thing.

I grew up in a poor school district. This post brought back memories of my third grade social studies book, which at the end stated, "Someday most people will have electricity, phones in their homes and even automobiles!"

I'm not that old. Everybody had all those things in abundance. I asked my teacher why the book said that and she explained copyrights.

I think the move to electronic books is a good thing for the students and for school budgets. The companies that publish textbooks should be preparing now for the eventual move to all electronic or digital. They can still be the main supplier of textbooks, they just need to switch the technology.

Perhaps instead of having textbooks on ereaders, they will be on the small notebook computers. That means they could use the computer for researching online as well as studying. The textbooks could have color photographs and charts. It might be able to make it possible to tag pages, add notes and comments, without the user being able to pass the book on to someone else.

The idea that kids may someday have one device that holds all their textbooks, and possibly even their notes and homework as well, is pretty exciting. The data could be wirelessly hotsynced to remote servers as backups, so if they lose the device at least they wouldn't lose all their data.

And I'll bet the kids of the future won't even appreciate it! We need that stuff now, so folks who remember the old days can marvel at the new technology.

I am on board with ebooks for text books! This semester at college, my daughter's classes called for three books that were approximately $200 each. She borrowed one. She bought one. Her boyfriend bought the other one and they are sharing them. God knows what they will do when it comes time to study for finals. Ebooks or books on DVD make a lot more sense.

Frankly, I'm moving in that direction myself. I have all my writing backed up online and use my laptop for writing, reading (except for the occasional treasure I find in used bookstores), research and fun.

For people who don't own a computer, they're free to use at the library. Before I got my first computer, I went to the library regularly to check my email and do research. It can be done.

Angel Sometimes by Helen Ginger

Angel Sometimes

Helen Ginger

Helen is the author of five books: three non-fiction, a short story anthology and a contemporary fiction, Angel Sometimes. She maintains an informational and interactive blog for writers and a weekly e-newsletter that has been going out to subscribers around the globe for thirteen years. She is an owner-partner and Women’s Marketing Director for Legends In Our Own Minds®, which specializes in creative networking opportunities for companies and groups.